Federation of Pediatric Organizations Task Force on Women in Pediatrics II: Survey of Active Members of the Society for Pediatric Research Regarding Part-Time and Flexible Work

Abstract

In 2007, the Federation of Pediatric Organizations (FOPO) appointed the Second Task Force on Women in Pediatrics. One of this task force’s charges was to develop recommendations on flexibility in career paths for physician scientists. Several studies have addressed career flexibility among pediatricians 1,2 and academic physicians, 3,4 but little research has addressed the experience of and issues relating to pediatric physician scientists. A 1992 survey of pediatric faculty in the United States reported that 6.7% of faculty members worked less than full time; 5 however, this survey focused on sex differences in academic achievement, and faculty who worked less than full time were not included in the survey analyses. Identifying large numbers of pediatric physician scientists for research purposes is difficult; thus, we surveyed active members of the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), a large pediatric research membership organization, to obtain data to create task force recommendations. The survey inquired about members’ experiences and perceptions of part-time and flexible work in pediatric research careers. Methods We targeted all active SPR members for the survey. Active SPR members are pediatric investigators who are actively engaged in pediatric research at the time of election to membership and younger than 50 years. We developed an 11-item survey that focused on members’ interest in and experience with part-time and flexible work. Responses were both closed- and open-ended. Examples of open-ended questions included ‘‘please describe the reason you did or did not engage in part-time or reduced work hours’’ and ‘‘please describe any positive or negative impact of part-time or reduced work hours on your research career.’’ To maximize comparability with other surveys, we used the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) definition of part-time work: ‘‘part-time or reduced hours.’’ The term was not further defined in the AAP survey. 1 The survey was distributed by email along with a cover letter explaining the purpose of the survey and providing a link to an anonymous Web-based survey system. A reminder was sent 2 weeks later. The Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center reviewed the research protocol and determined that it was exempt. Means and proportions were calculated to describe the study population and quantitative responses. c 2 and Fisher exact tests were used to determine the significance of differences between groups. The open-ended responses were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach. 6 The text of each response was read, and the meaning or a phrase, sentence, or paragraph was summarized into a code or label. The codes were then organized into a coding scheme by the first author. Codes were applied to the first 5 comments for each question independently by 2 of the authors. The results were compared, and the coding scheme adjusted as appropriate. In a second round of analyses, the coding scheme was applied to all comments by 2 of the authors.